Yesterday’s ONS labour market figures show unemployment down to 4.6%, falling from 5.5% at the height of the pandemic, with over a million vacancies. Young workers have been the hardest hit with the 16-24 unemployment rate reaching almost 15% by September 2020, but this is now also falling – down to 12.9% in the May-July […]
The pandemic has caused a serious crisis for Tory higher education policy. Wanting the university sector to be restricted to ‘the few’, or at the very least, highly stratified, with the right students in the right institutions, Conservative governments have tried to establish an alternative vocational route for young people by introducing new ‘technical’ qualifications […]
As A-level results are officially published, media platforms have already prepared the ground for another round of grade inflation. Anxious to do the best for their students, teachers will inevitably ‘mark up’. So more young people will get higher grades and top universities (those that ‘select’ rather than ‘recruit’) will be under pressure to accept […]
The DfE has published the results of the latest ‘consultation’ on its proposals for Level 3 post-16 qualifications. In reality this has been a limited exercise. Academic qualifications were always going to remain in their current form, with A-levels continuing to be the main route into HE. But the government has already decided that T-levels […]
Education is widely considered to have a significant influence on the general performance of the economy, as well as on an individual’s returns in the labour market. In contrast to the physical assets of an enterprise, education is regarded as ‘human capital’. Because educated workers add more value, then according to this logic, the more […]
